Program Notes
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PROGRAM ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIFTH SEASON Chicago Symphony Orchestra Riccardo Muti Zell Music Director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, September 24, 2015, at 8:00 Friday, September 25, 2015, at 8:00 Saturday, September 26, 2015, at 8:00 Riccardo Muti Conductor Xavier de Maistre Harp Chabrier España Ginastera Harp Concerto, Op. 25 Allegro giusto Molto moderato Liberamente capriccioso—Vivace XAVIER DE MAISTRE INTERMISSION Charpentier Impressions of Italy Serenade At the Fountain On Muleback On the Summits Napoli Ravel Boléro This concert series is made possible by the Juli Grainger Endowment. This work is part of the CSO Premiere Retrospective, which is generously sponsored by the Sargent Family Foundation. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. COMMENTS by Phillip Huscher Emmanuel Chabrier Born January 18, 1841, Ambert, France. Died September 13, 1894, Paris, France. España España is the sole survivor several of his canvases, including his last major of a once-prestigious work, the celebrated Bar aux Folies-Bergère, career. The only work by which he hung over his piano. (At the time of his Emmanuel Chabrier that death in 1894, Chabrier owned a small museum’s is still performed with any worth of significant art, including seven oils by regularity, it began as a Manet, six by Monet, three by Renoir, and one simple souvenir of six by Cézanne.) months in Spain. Although Chabrier dabbled in composition Chabrier and his wife from childhood and became a pianist of impres- spent the latter half of sive virtuosity, at first he followed the family tra- 1882 traveling the country, stopping in Toledo, dition and pursued law as his profession. He con- Seville, Granada, Malaga, Valencia, and tinued to write music on the side while working Barcelona. Chabrier’s score is one of the high as a civil servant in the Ministry of the Interior points in the late-nineteenth century’s fascination in Paris, but, in a sense, Chabrier only came into with the Iberian peninsula that also inspired his own as a composer after hearing Tristan and Édouard Manet’s paintings of the 1860s, Lalo’s Isolde in Munich in 1880. He resigned from the Symphonie espagnole in 1873, and Bizet’s Carmen ministry later that year, became a confirmed—if the following year (joined in the next century by not obsessive—Wagnerian, and decided to Debussy’s Ibéria and Ravel’s Rapsodie espagnole). devote the rest of his life to composition. It was Chabrier’s close friendship with Manet—his España, however, a very non-Wagnerian musical neighbor from 1879 to 1883—may have first postcard, that made him an overnight sensation. given him the idea to compose a Spanish piece. Chabrier had once thought of being a painter hile touring Spain, Chabrier filled himself, and he closely followed the work of his notebooks with details about the the groundbreaking French artists during his rhythms of Spanish dance music lifetime, regularly noting how closely their ideas (heW concluded it was impossible to notate the paralleled his own. Chabrier posed for Manet actual rhythm of a malagueña); the cut of the on three occasions, the last time in 1881, only dancers’ black felt hats; “the admirable Sevillan months before the Chabriers set off for Spain. derrière, turning in every direction while the When Manet died in 1883, Chabrier bought rest of the body stays immobile.” Near the end COMPOSED MOST RECENT INSTRUMENTATION 1883 CSO PERFORMANCES two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two July 13, 1991, Ravinia Festival. clarinets, four bassoons, four horns, FIRST PERFORMANCE Gennady Rozhdestvensky conducting two trumpets and two cornets, three November 4, 1883; Paris, France trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, February 23 & 24, 2012, Orchestra Hall. snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, two Alain Altinoglu conducting FIRST CSO PERFORMANCES harps, strings January 25 & 26, 1895, June 20, 2012, Orchestra Hall. Edwin Auditorium Theatre. Theodore Outwater conducting (Donor APPROXIMATE Thomas conducting Appreciation concert) PERFORMANCE TIME 6 minutes July 9, 1936, Ravinia Festival. Hans Lange conducting CSO RECORDING 1961. Andre Kostelanetz conducting. Video Images (video) 2 of the Spanish tour, for piano duet—it was called Jota, after the lively Chabrier wrote Spanish dance—but soon realized he would need home to his friend, the full range of orchestral colors to do justice the Wagnerian to his vivid memories. España, as the piece was conductor Charles finally called, is not only full of memorable Lamoureux, that as folklike tunes, but it also benefits from Chabrier’s soon as he returned keen attention to the rhythmic patterns of to Paris he intended Spanish dance. As the composer predicted, to compose an España was a great success from the start—it was “extraordinary fanta- encored at the premiere and was praised by com- sia”—a reminiscence posers as different as Manuel de Falla (who knew of the music and a thing or two about authenticity in Spanish Charles Lamoureux dance that he had music) and Gustav Mahler (who conducted found so intoxicating España on several occasions). Even Chabrier, in Spain. It would, however, cannot have imagined the popularity its he promised, incite the audience to a fever pitch main theme would achieve seventy-three years of excitement. Chabrier began the piece as a work later as a Perry Como single on the Hit Parade. Alberto Ginastera Born April 11, 1916, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Died June 25, 1983, Geneva, Switzerland. Harp Concerto, Op. 25 In his native Argentina, for study in the States. His diary entry for Alberto Ginastera was September 26 reads: recognized as a major composer from the first There is a young man here who is gener- public performance of his ally looked upon as the “white hope” of music. His ballet suite Argentine music. He is now twenty-five Panambí was an overnight and is certainly the first candidate for a trip sensation when it was to the States from any standpoint. Alberto played at the Teatro Ginastera would profit by contacts outside Colón in Buenos Aires in Argentina. He is looked upon with favor 1937; the complete ballet was successfully staged by all groups here, is presentable, modest three years later. (Ginastera eventually destroyed almost to the timid degree, and will, no all of his scores composed before Panambí, giving doubt, someday be an outstanding figure in the impression that he burst on the scene a fully Argentine music. formed talent.) In 1941, the U.S. government sent Aaron But Ginastera was slow to make his entry into Copland, a brand-name composer as American the musical life of the United States. In 1941, the as hot dogs and baseball, on a good-will, success of Panambí persuaded Lincoln Kirstein fact-finding tour of Latin America. Before to commission a ballet from Ginastera for the Copland left—his itinerary planned by the American Ballet Caravan, a company he was Committee for Inter-American Artistic and then managing for George Balanchine. But by Intellectual Relations (its title a marvel of the time Ginastera had completed Estancia, the high-handed bureaucratic prose)—he agreed troupe had disbanded and the premiere was off. to take careful notes so that he could give (Estancia wasn’t staged for another ten years, a full report and recommend composers even in Argentina; the complete original score 3 wasn’t played in the United States until 1991, Ginastera began sketching the new concerto although by then a suite of dances from the ballet in 1956, but by the time he had finished it in had become popular concert fare.) 1964, Phillips had retired. (Although she never In 1942, Ginastera was awarded a played Ginastera’s score—the 1965 premiere Guggenheim Foundation grant to visit the was given by the big-name international soloist United States, but the trip was postponed Nicanor Zabaleta—Phillips claimed it was the because of the war. Finally, in 1945, the com- best of the many works for harp that she and poser and his family came to this country as her husband had commissioned over the years.) temporary political refugees following Perón’s Ginastera wanted to write a concerto assumption of power. This was the first of that extolled virtuosity and challenged many visits. For sixteen months beginning in the performer, but he quickly realized December 1945, he lived and composed in the that the harp presented difficulties for a United States; he spent the summer of 1946 mid-twentieth-century composer: at Tanglewood, where he again met up with Copland. Ginastera continued to roam, but The special features of harp technique— after Perón was removed from power in 1955, so simple and at the same time so he returned to Argentina, where he became an complicated—the possibility of writing for indispensable part of the country’s cultural life. twelve sounds on only seven strings, the eminently diatonic nature of the instrument, nlike nearly every other composer drawn and many other problems make writing to the concerto form, Ginastera began for the harp a harder task than writing for by writing one for the harp. (He went piano, violin, or clarinet. Uon to write concertos for more familiar subjects: piano, violin, and In the end, he spent eight years (and com- cello.) The idea of a posed two other concertos, one for piano and harp concerto came another for violin) before he was satisfied from Edna Phillips, that the harp part was not only virtuosic, but the first harp of playable—not only colorful and imaginative, the Philadelphia but idiomatic.